The building, industrial and land materials/equipment category has seen a recent rise in advertising. This has been particularly from the paint category and even cement category which has been advertising during this Diwali season. This has been noticeable on TV news channels where the category advertises the most due to its TG present there. According to an S-Group Insights report, which is part of TAM Media Research, said the paint and cement brands constitute the highest spends in their category on TV and radio in the period of 2010-2014.

This category has a share of 2.6 % on TV ad volume in last 5 years out of which Paints & Cements contributes to 62% in TV & 53 % in Radio. On TV the paint brands are the highest at 32% of the total category adex and cement was a little lower at 30%. While on radio cements were higher at 39% and paints are 15%. While the category’s adex on TV grew by 25% in 2013, it barely grew by 2% in 2014. The reason for this was the decline in cement brands adex from above 8 million seconds in 2013 to 5 million seconds in 2014. Paints on the other hand continued to grow from below 7 million seconds to 8 million seconds.

However, this Diwali period has seen the resurgence of the paint and especially the cement brands. While the paint brands had some time prior to Diwali, the cement brands were seen exceptionally active during the Bihar assembly election period. As cement brands prefer to advertise on news channels on TV this seemed the best period with even Diwali a few days away. Brands such as Ambuja Cement, UltraTech Cement, JK Lakshmi Pro Cement, ACC Cement and Dalmia Cement were seen as key advertisers on several news channels during the counting day on November 8. This included Hindi as well as English news channels. While previous Hindi news (30%), Hindi regional (21%) and regional language news (26%) were the highest preference to advertise on, this year English news has also become for them to increase their spends. While UltraTech was the powered by sponsor on Times Now during counting day, LK Lakshmi Pro Cement was an associate sponsor on NDTV 24x7 and Amuja Cement was a key associate sponsor on NewsX.

Many of the cement brands had come up with new campaigns recently. UltraTech cement had come out with the Build Beautiful TVC a few months back. Ambuja Cement on the other hand came out with a new creative TVC with The Great Khali a few weeks back.

Similarly, paint brands have been seen active during the Diwali season especially on news television. This includes Nerolac, Asian Paints, Dulux and Berger. Nerolac and Asian Paints have created special ad campaigns during the festive period. Nerolac even has created an ad for Diwali and Durga Puja this year. Dulux on the other hand had created a TVC a while back with Farhan Aktar which was being used. The brands were seeing during the counting day on all channels such as Times Now, CNN IBN, NDTV 24x7, NewsX, India Today, Aaj Tak, ABP News, NDTV India, IBN7 and Zee News.

According to a senior media planner, the paint brands and cement brands have been spending much more than last year and especially during the festive period. “A reason for this could be the economy doing much better than compared to last year. While ad spends of paint companies have grown by at least 20-25%, the cement category ad spends growth is a bit less at 10-15%. But is much better than compared to last year,” he said.

While paint brands ad spends are bound by the festive period, we definitely can expect more spends from them till the end of the year. With Diwali and the Bihar assembly elections in close proximity we saw a rise of cement as well as paint brands advertising. Cement brands will be expected to continue their spends if the optimism in the economy continues to grow.